Posted on 04/29/2007 3:20:50 AM PDT by leadpenny
Editor’s note: Veteran reporter Fred Connors recently ended his nearly 45-year relationship with cigarettes. Beginning today and running through Tuesday, May 1, Connors will offer his insights in a three-part series into what it took for him to realize he had a problem with cigarettes and how he is dealing with the issue.
_____
It’s not easy to part ways with an old friend.
Especially when the friend is adamant about not leaving — and even you are a little queasy about making the split.
We have seen others do it. We watched as the Beatles and Sonny and Cher went separate ways. The same thing happened with the late Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
My friend and I have been joined at the lips for nearly 45 years. That’s a long time. In all those years, not more than a few hours passed without us being together.
Sad as it may be, a friendship started in 1963 must end in 2007. We are at a crossroad. My friend must go one way while I turn and head out alone.
This beloved friend is a cigarette. I accept the gut-wrenching reality that it was never a true friend.
Friends don’t let friends self-destruct.
It’s also not loyal. As soon as it’s done with me it will lure its next victim and chart another 45-year path of destruction.
How could this happen?
In hindsight, I can revisit addictive behavior I chose to ignore over the years.
? First was the false sense of acceptance I gained among high school peers. The Lucky Strike pack rolled up in a T-shirt sleeve was a 1960s status symbol.
? Early on, I dared not go to bed knowing I had no smokes. Late night trips to the store in any weather seemed normal.
? Somewhere in there, the U.S. Attorney General ordered health warnings printed on cigarette packs.
? I gratefully accepted and joyfully gave wrapped cartons of cigarette as Christmas or birthday gifts.
? The ability to enjoy a hearty laugh ended because that produced a coughing jag.
? I resented no-smoking sections popping up in restaurants.
? As years passed, I became unable to play backyard football or alley basketball because they meant more coughing jags and gasping for air.
? More recently, I experienced very weak legs while cutting grass or doing routine physical tasks.
? Finally, the embarrassing coughing and shortness of breath could no longer be hidden.
Not even from myself.
As my health plummeted I found still another way to ignore it. I tried to intellectualize and spiritualize some justification to keep lighting up.
I am a born-again Christian who has sat with Bible-teaching pastors for many years. For some reason, none of them ever came flat out and said smoking was a sin.
One brushed against it once by saying “smoking won’t send you to Hell, it just makes you smell like it.”
Is smoking a sin? Refusing to quit smoking is. The Bible says to know what is right and refuse to do so is sin.
Yet another problem cigarettes have caused in my life is the tens of thousands of dollars spent supporting the addiction. There were times, when money was tight, that food and basic needs were shoved aside in favor of cigarettes.
How far can you spiral out of control?
It all came down around me the day I decided to tell a doctor about it.
I had been getting annual physical exams at the Veteran’s Administration Primary Care Clinic in St. Clairsville.
My answer was the same every time Nurse Practitioner Judith Heilmeier ask how it was going.
“I feel great,” I bragged. “Except for the usual aches and pains in these old bones, everything is good.”
I knew something was wrong with my breathing but as long as there was no diagnosis I was still in control.
Besides, I knew she was busy looking for prostate cancer or some other old man’s disease. As long as there was no wheezing going on while I was in there, she would be clueless about my lungs.
No dialogue meant no diagnosis. The down side of which is the longer I could keep this information away from my primary care giver, the more time I would have to avoid getting face to face with my own mortality.
I fessed up. She followed up.
The chest X-ray would introduce a spooky new phrase into my life.
“Mr. Connors, your chest X-ray is back,” a matter-of-fact voice said on the phone. “You have COPD.”
The voice went on to say “COPD is Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. It is irreversible lung damage and we can’t do anything for you unless you quit smoking.”
A quick check led me to learn COPD is a combination of chronic bronchitis and emphysema.
COPD causes the following damage:
? Airways and air sacs lose their elasticity (like an old rubber band);
? Walls between many of the air sacs are destroyed;
? Walls of the airways become thick and inflamed;
? Cells in the airways make more mucus than usual, which tends to clog the airways.
The disease develops slowly, and it may be many years before you notice symptoms like feeling short of breath. Most of the time, COPD is diagnosed in middle-aged or older people.
COPD is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States and throughout the world.
Its symptoms include persistent cough, mucus production, shortness of breath, especially with exercise, wheezing (a whistling or rattle type noise) when you breathe in, tightness in the chest and weight loss.
COPD. I can either live with it or die from it.
My friend and I are at the crossroad.
Smoked non-filtered Camels for 50+ years. Couldn’t smoke on the 14 hour flight over here and quit them then & there. Besides, no place to buy em where I am.......I dont feel any better or worse.....~!
Morning, lp.
Good for you.
Good morning.
I trust you never got hooked on the vile leaf?
Actually I'm amazed at the sheer amount of bull-crap my own brain will serve up as justification for lighting up again.
The more I lie to myself the more determined I am to not do it.
Should be a hoot! (groan)
Thanks for the post.God bless
So, if the morning cup'a joe reminds you of the weed, drop the Java also. Your bod doesn't need caffeine any more than it needs nicotine.
I thought this might be another opus.
Actually, I guess it was a smoking opus.
A smokus?
Either way, it’s just as preachy. Forty five years, and all of a sudden now it’s a “sin”? (A health matter, yes. But a sin? Guess we need to raise taxes more.)
Why do folks feel compelled to regale us with opuses and smokuses? Can’t anyone just shut up and quit? Or quit and shut up?
Thanks for the ping.
Still have the smoking monkey on my back.
“Smokus”
I thought of putting a “(not a FR opus)” after the title.
One of the times I quit I was evangelistic about it. I soon realized people have to decide for themselves.
It is a tough one to break I hear. I would imagine quitting is a lot like becoming sober. The tough part is the decision that you really want to quit, and are willing to follow through on that committment when your brain gives you excuses to smoke just one more, or one more pack, or one more carton, or just for the rest of this week, month, or year.
I gotta have one vice. Well, two, counting Free Republic.
8th day.
It really is one day at a time. Everything is better without ‘em.
Its been about 20 for me and I haven’t missed them for 19 years. In fact each year that goes by makes me loathe them even more. I’m having my first cup of coffee as I type this and it taste’s so delicious. A taste I could never have had 21 years ago.
That is so true, we cannot even really help until the other person is ready to quit for their own reasons.
Congrats to you on your success and for sharing it with the group, you might have helped someone on the fence today to see the light!
Because it is difficult, scary, and people need support. It is also good that people publicly commit to changing something like this, as it helps with accountability.
Push the back button if it offends you. You knew within two sentences what it was about.
I’m on day 15 smoke-free. Nic patches help a lot. The first few days were tough, even with the Nic patch.
Isn't that the truth? You have taken an important step by realizing that there is a part of your mind that is working against your best efforts to quit.
This is called our Addictive Voice and more information on how to recognize and beat this voice can be found here. [It is written pertaining to alcohol but the destructive voice is the same].
Carolyn
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.